


The Kidfic AU - 11

by Tieleen



Series: The Kidfic AU [11]
Category: Bandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-25
Updated: 2010-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 06:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tieleen/pseuds/Tieleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Getting</em> the mail was also a concession Gerard struggled with for a while, but he had to admit that if the mail was hidden away in a convenient box instead of directly in his way, the chances he'd ever open it weren't too good.</p><p>"That's not a big deal, right?" he'd asked Mikey. "I mean, kids get the mail, right?"</p><p>"We didn't," Mikey had pointed out, stirring his coffee.</p><p>"Kids who aren't <em>us</em>, Mikey," Gerard said, and Mikey gave him a look like, what's the difference? So Gerard gave up on that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kidfic AU - 11

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is possibly the longest bit, and it's all about paying bills. Whatever you think this says about me, I forgive you.

[And at some point there Sascha said,

//....Poor Spencer, when I think about it. He probably has to run around making sure his family doesn't perish in a fire a lot. Not to mention at school...

"Er. Spencer? Could you, um, come with Ms Ivarssen to the nurse's office? Your brother... sort of set himself on fire during home ec."

Spencer looked long suffering. "I SAID this was going to happen, but did anybody listen to me?"

Two days later - "Er, Spencer? Your sister is stuck in the ventilation system... Apparently she's exploring?"

"Tell her to wriggle out on her stomach. Do you have any ice cream lying around? Because that always works."

Two hours later - "Er, Spencer? Your dad is wondering if you paid the water bill this month..."

"No, because he took the bill and went to the bank with it. He came home with fingerpaint and no bill. ...I should maybe have wondered a bit more about that newest collage of his though. I -thought- some of the bits from Fight The Man looked familiar."//

And I said,

//HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I am incorporating *all* of this, except, um, the water bill, because I have to believe Gerard found *some* way to handle that. Somehow. Maybe he sold his soul to someone at work. Or, hey, maybe someone at work felt sorry for him! *brightens* Spencer does tackle a lot of the non-routine issues, though, it's true. Because some things just don't really occur to Gerard.//

And so later on there was,

//More general rambling, more lack of dialogue. Also, bills. Because really, how *would* he avoid making collages from them? You're allowed not to care about the answer. (the *short* answer, by the way, is 'by being really, incredibly neurotic about it.') Also, unfinished!//

 

Gerard has a triple-alarm system for paying his bills. Number one is the special corkboard in the kitchen, where all mail that requires Something Done goes to live immediately after Gerard opens it, which is immediately after he finds it on his pillow, even if he's dead at the time. This is a delicate and extremely time-sensitive process, because if he makes the mistake of going to sleep with the unopened mail until the next day, or, more dangerous still, if he pauses on his way from the bedroom to the kitchen and puts it down for a minute, the bill will inevitably run off to live in a dusty pile in the furthest corner of the attic, behind Helena's ugliest cabinet.

(Gerard has a whole comics stack, drawn half-assedly over his first coffee in the mornings, about the tribes of zombie electricity bills and mummified Second Notices that would live up there, in another life, doing war with lost raggedy socks and gypsy settlements of broken toys. He doesn't leave it at home, though; the kids are just fine with the human undead, but they're a bit too aware of the non-distance between _this_ stuff and real life. He takes it to work and gives it to Nate, who adds cobras stalking the unopened envelopes. "They're the easy prey," he explains. "Not even born yet." Sometimes that alone is incentive enough to open the damned things -- when you, say, come home from the emergency room at one AM, because, for example, one of your children has once again completely forgotten to mention he'd nearly had his leg cut off at recess until bedtime, you may want to do nothing but sleep, but the last thing you want on your conscience is an entirely other species' theoretical young.)

The other option, of course, to what will happen if Gerard leaves his mail on the other pillow for two days or forget a bill on the bathroom sink while he's brushing his teeth, is that it'll miraculously and wordlessly end up on the corkboard anyway, orderly and neat, as if by invisible hands. That's worse.

_Getting_ the mail was also a concession Gerard struggled with for a while, but he had to admit that if the mail was hidden away in a convenient box instead of directly in his way, the chances he'd ever open it weren't too good.

"That's not a big deal, right?" he'd asked Mikey. "I mean, kids get the mail, right?"

"We didn't," Mikey had pointed out, stirring his coffee.

"Kids who aren't _us_, Mikey," Gerard said, and Mikey gave him a look like, what's the difference? So Gerard gave up on that.

In the end he had to give up altogether and go ask Keltie and Nate. Asking Mikey still felt like doing it himself, because Mikey was even more clueless than him most of the time, but Nate and Keltie were tiny and efficient and sometimes reminded Gerard uncomfortably of his eldest. As it was, they'd helped him think up the noticeboard and set up all of the thousand Organizing Systems and figure out how to pay bills online ("I could do it," Spencer had said reasonably. "I'm better at computers than you," and Gerard had ended up bribing an eleven years old with a live music show to distract him from wanting to do his job for him. His life was a little surreal, actually, and also, the show was some terrifying boyband doing recycled pop, and he had to prevent himself from explaining to Spencer about his soul getting corrupted by commercialism, because you weren't supposed to judge your children.)

Gerard would have liked to at least figure out the mail question by himself, but, well. It wasn't like the _kids_ would tell him if it wasn't something they were supposed to do.

"They're not going to get mail-getting trauma, Gee," was Keltie's verdict.

"Spence wants to pay the bills," Gerard said morosely. "He already has trauma."

"Just tell him not to open them," Nate said. "Anything with your name on it's your private mail. He can't pay if he doesn't have the bill, right?"

Gerard personally wouldn't have bet on it, but he had other things on his mind.

"They won't get it," he pointed out. "We don't do, you know, locks and all that."

"Well, say some crazy Monkey fan starts sending you threatening letters," Keltie said. "You don't want them reading that, right?" This wasn't in any way likely to happen, but Gerard tried that approach anyway.

They didn't open the mail -- though apparently anything forgotten for more than a day was fair game -- but Spencer demanded a lock to his room like two weeks later. He didn't have Keltie to supply him with crazed fans, though, so Gerard just told him he was too young and he could be a teenager when he hit fourteen or something. He has a feeling Spencer wrote that down somewhere.

So the first rung was a little complicated to implement, though generally it works pretty simply now. The second rung he didn't have to do anything about. It involves the fact that, if a Second Notice _does_ come in on anything (and Gerard has considered hiding them, but of course then he'll forget they exist,) Spencer will extremely casually say, "Hey, dad, we got a second notice on the phone bill." Sometimes -- and they haven't gotten any second notices in a long time, Gerard's pretty proud of that -- he apparently just decides the air tastes funny today, and asks, also in a completely casual voice, "Hey, dad, did you pay the water bill?" The hidden catch of the second rung, and what makes it much more lethal than the first, is that Spencer is better at sounding casual than anybody carrying Gerard's genes should be, but then Gerard will look over his shoulder and see his second offspring, standing there looking vaguely stoic (seriously, Lindsey had some _weird_ genes in her) with huge, worried eyes about to eat his face.

So. Gerard's pretty good at not getting Second Notices now. Also he leaves the bills up sometimes with the approval number on them, just so everyone involved can bask in the glory.


End file.
